CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
The Wicker Man is a great British film, one of the top horror films of all time. Since its release in 1973, its curious combination of queasily jolly folkloric ritual and sinister paganism has only grown to seem more discomfiting, reeking of the uncanny, and flavouring new films as recently as the extraordinary Kill List. I propose, then, to assume The Wicker Man is 5/5 smash - if you haven’t seen it, you should do so at once - but this review will deal with the other film in a new DVD set, Wicker Man director Robin Hardy’s 2010 sequel, the far less well-known The Wicker Tree.The plot has a Read more ...
mark.hudson
If Pink Floyd were always just businessmen in loonpants, Hawkwind really did appear to live the dream – or was it the nightmare? The early Seventies people’s band looked as though they permanently camped out, though live at least they weren’t easy to see: just masses of tangled hair, glimpsed through flickering strobes and acid-fuelled projections, their music a wind tunnel of remorseless two-chord riffing. Indeed, while "Silver Machine", their one hit single, is a true rock'n'roll classic, Hawkwind’s albums always seemed the least reason to get excited about them, compared to freakin’ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Cartoon goth-metal boogieman Brian Warner and his gang return with their first album in three years, and their 10th in all. In Europe Marilyn Manson – the stage name of both the front man and the band - are rightly seen as an industrialised update of Alice Cooper’s horror-film showbiz rock but in the States the country’s more conservative elements really do seem to buy into their cabaret antichrist schtick. This even led to Warner’s articulate and amusing appearance defending himself from accusations of driving the nation’s youth to gun-crime in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.Marilyn Read more ...
theartsdesk
Carole King: The Legendary DemosLisa-Marie Ferla For one whose appreciation of Carole King, the songwriter, has never truly been distinguishable from her appreciation of Carole King, the performer, a listen to the treasure trove that is The Legendary Demos is a curious exercise indeed. Perhaps it’s the presence on this collection of early cuts of six tracks that would later appear on Tapestry, King’s 1971 breakthrough in her own right, but even with the knowledge that many of these recordings were put together as showcases to be pitched to other artists, it is hard to dissociate them from a Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well, this is lovely. Low-down-and-lazy country-soul grooves, a bit of Morricone, a bit of Nancy'n'Lee, a sprinkling of Southern Gothic, and through it all Norah Jones's satin voice delivering tidy little narratives tied up in gently insinuating melodic hooks. Jones has been accused many times of making latterday easylistening, music that's nothing more than analgesic, but there's always been more too her than that. Yes, sometimes it's just sweet whimsy, but as often as not, there's a bittersweet tang to the simple lyrics, a Carver short story sense of offstage drama. It could be Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Just as you think you’ve got Tuesday, After Christmas pegged as an Eric Rohmer-style relationship drama, it gradually becomes clear it’s something else. The impact left by this ambiguous, non-judgmental examination of the emotional crisis affecting a married man and those around him is a result of its measured approach and deft sensitivity. Less about the dialogue, it’s more about interaction and nuance.Paul Hanganu (Mimi Brănescu) is married to Adriana (Mirela Oprişor). They have a bright little daughter. He works in some unspecified role for a bank, Adriana works in law. Adriana doesn’t Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s a long way from Eel Pie Island to the Lone Star State, but if the Mystery Jets didn’t want people remarking that fourth album Radlands marked a departure from a certain strain of poppy, guitar-driven indie love song the London band have always done adequately they shouldn’t have chopped a porchside photo of the four of them (following the sudden resignation of bass player Kai Fish earlier this month) into the shape of the latter on the cover.Artwork aside, singer Blaine Harrison readily dons a pair of dusty snakeskin boots to play the cast of desert-crossed lovers and fighters who make Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kooky ladies are very much of the moment, an ongoing moment, actually - the last couple of years, to be precise - but they seem to be with us to stay which is surely a good thing, especially in the playground. Better them than unreconstructed pole-dancing, as promulgated by the Pussycat Dolls et al. Then there’s Gaga, of course, who’s a lot of both. Now the kook generation, from Ellie Goulding to Paloma Faith, have to decide (once they've steered clear of wannabe-Mariah X Factor tedium) what ratio of gay club 3am hard house stomp to inject into their cod-Kate Bush freakery.Marina Diamandis Read more ...
howard.male
It would be an impossible to do a comprehensive global history of cinema in just 15 hours. You could attempt it by throwing hundreds of thousands of second-long clips at the viewer in a firework display of celluloid. But film-maker and critic Mark Cousins opts for gentle hypnotism over dazzling pyrotechnics. In the opening episode alone, in a lucid correlation of words and images, he shows us how filmmakers evolved a grammar for this new medium which took full advantage of an intrinsic plasticity which theatre, photography and painting lacked. The close-up, the flashback, the move from one Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title isn’t far from literal. Adventures in Your Own Backyard was recorded in Patrick Watson’s Montréal apartment. Thankfully for his neighbours, despite a song called “Noisy Sunday”, it’s a restrained album where even the percussion crescendos wouldn’t have rattled windows – too much. It’s also, recognisably, a Patrick Watson album.Four albums in, it remains difficult to know how to react to Patrick Watson, the person and his eponymous band. As with Andrew Bird, Antony and the Johnsons still loom large over proceedings. Watson’s tremulous, high-register voice, the chamber-like Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Before we begin, a confession: despite my overwhelming fondness for sensitive male singer-songwriter types, Rufus Wainwright and I have never gotten on. I recognise that famous rich, luscious voice as an exquisite instrument in its own right yet find the songs it performs too theatrical to really warm to.It may be “the most pop album I’ve ever made” in Wainwright’s own words, but despite a big name production credit from Mark Ronson Out of the Game doesn’t come across as an album that’s trying for some sideways sidle into the mainstream. “I’m looking for something that can’t be found on the Read more ...
theartsdesk
T Rex: Electric Warrior 40th Anniversary Special EditionHoward MaleThe most blinkered and subjective music fan is the teenager. But is it my teenage self (barely mediated by my adult self) informing you that this T Rex album from 1972 is the most perfect collection of fey cosmic ballads and sexy pop/rock that there has ever, ever been? I’d like to think not. You see the thing is, even today, as soon as the earthy unearthly “Mambo Sun” fills the room with its sultry, ineffable presence, I’m thinking what I always think when I play Electric Warrior: this sinuous, fey, funky, majestic, Read more ...